Among the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram is a closely watched constituency, with three star candidates in the political fray — UDF’s Congress candidate and incumbent MP Shashi Tharoor, BJP leader and former Mizoram Governor Kummanam Rajashekharan and LDF candidate and sitting MLA C Divakaran.
But going by the predictions from the three opinion polls by leading media houses of Kerala — Asianet News with AZ Research Partners, Mathrubhumi News with AC Nielsen and Manorama News with Karvy Insights, the fight in Thiruvananthapuram is going to be neck and neck, but NDA may get a slight edge over UDF.
However, all three opinion polls have equally predicted that UDF’s Shashi Tharoor, who is the two-time sitting MP from Thiruvananthapuram constituency, could be defeated, with the possibility of NDA opening their account in the state.
What the polls predict
The battle, a close one, is primarily now said to be between Kummanam and Tharoor.
According to the election survey by Asianet News-AZ Research, NDA candidate Kummanam Rajasekharan will stake claim to the constituency by a margin of 6%. While the NDA is speculated to lead with 40% votes in Thiruvananthapuram, the UDF is likely to hold the second position with 34% votes, followed by LDF with 25% votes.
The opinion poll results of Manorama News could not predict a clear winner in Thiruvananthapuram, but said that that BJP will get an upper hand in the upcoming polls, though by a margin of one per cent. It states that the BJP will increase its vote share from 28% in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls to 36%. However, the survey was done before BJP had declared the candidature of Kummanam Rajasekharan. With the hold Kummanam has in the constituency, the margins are predicted are likely to go up.
The survey by Mathrubhumi News also states that NDA will open its account in the constituency. The survey predicted that NDA will get 40% votes, while Shashi Tharoor will only get 33%.
It is to be noted that while Shashi Tharoor won by a margin of over 1 lakh votes in 2009, capturing 44.9% votes. In 2014, the Tharoor won 34.09% of votes and only won by a margin of 15,470 votes, with the BJP's O Rajagopal coming a close second.
'No matter what, Tharoor will win'
The possible defeat predicted by the opinion polls seemed to have made the local Congress workers in the constituency apprehensive. Just days after two of the three opinion polls were out, Tharoor sent a letter to All India Congress Committee General Secretary Mukul Wasnik, stating that local committees are not cooperating with him in the election campaign.
A source from the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), however, told TNM that they don't take the exit polls seriously.
“The company that handles the election campaigning for BJP is Association of Billion Minds (ABM). As far as we know, manipulating exit polls and surveys in their favour is part of their tactics. So we are least bothered about it and are confident that Tharoor will win the election,” the source said.
(With inputs from Korah Abraham)